Japan will purchase the additional crude oil produced in Alaska as part of its effort to reduce its heavy dependence on Middle East oil. Currently about 90 percent of Japan’s crude oil imports comes from that region.
Japan to invest to increase Alaskan crude oil production
Chinami Tajika, Staff Writer, March 18, 2026, The Asahi Shimbaum
Japan will invest to increase crude oil production in Alaska as part of the $550 billion (87 trillion yen) tariff agreement with the United States and also stockpile the reserves produced in the U.S. state.
Sources said Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and U.S. President Donald Trump will announce the plan when they meet in Washington, D.C., on March 19.
Japan will purchase the additional crude oil produced in Alaska as part of its effort to reduce its heavy dependence on Middle East oil. Currently about 90 percent of Japan’s crude oil imports comes from that region.
The worsening situation in the Middle East has affected crude oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively blockaded by Iran. Subsequently, the volume of crude oil reaching Japan will decrease greatly from around March 20, according to the economy ministry.
Economist Brett Watson said the level of competition was novel. “Many tracts received multiple bids,” said Watson, who works at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage. “That hasn’t been true in a number of years in the NPR-A.”
$164M: Auction for drilling rights in Alaska’s Arctic sets new records
Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media, March 18, 2026
An auction of drilling rights in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska broke records Wednesday, suggesting that the oil and gas industry is keenly interested in expanding in the U.S. Arctic.
Kevin Pendergast, Alaska director of the Bureau of Land Management, announced that the winning bids totaled nearly $164 million, half of which will go to the state of Alaska.
“This is the strongest sale we have ever had in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, by nearly every measure,” he said on a live cast after all 430 bids were unsealed and read out loud.
The federal lease sale adds meat to the Trump administration’s framing of Alaska as an energy beast that just needs to be “unleashed” from prior conservation restrictions.
Eleven companies placed bids on more than 1.3 million acres in the western Arctic reserve. Much of the industry’s focus was on tracts near Willow, the ConocoPhillips project already underway.
As expected, ConocoPhillips was a big bidder, but other major and minor companies participated, too. The Spanish company Repsol won 42 leases, with partners that include energy giant Shell. At least half of its bids were more than $2 million.
While Trump’s efforts to revive coal in his first term had little impact, he’s having more success since returning to the White House last year. The US Energy Department has also ordered five coal plants that were set to retire to remain in service and has indicated that it may issue similar orders to other sites that are preparing to shut down.
US planning first new coal power plant since 2013 in Alaska
Mining.Com, March 17, 2026
Terra Energy Center is pouring $1 billion into a deal for a planned coal project in Alaska, marking the first investment in new US coal power in more than a decade.
The in-principal agreement with Hyundai Heavy Industries Power Systems for an order of power-plant boilers was described in a US Interior Department fact sheet Monday. The transaction is one of several that advanced during talks at the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Ministerial and Business Forum in Tokyo this weekend.
Terra Energy Center’s plan represents a striking reversal for the US coal industry. Coal once supplied more than half of the nation’s electricity, but that figure has been steadily declining and now stands at about 16%. The shift came as utilities turned to cheaper and cleaner power sources, including natural gas and renewables, in an effort to rein in climate change. Environmental groups have been pushing to eliminate coal power completely and questioned the economics of developing new projects.
